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Prevent RJ45 Jack Damage to Your Cable Tester

11/23/16

Wait! Don’t plug that cable in! You just terminated a cable and you want to see if the crimp is good and you’re thinking; “That’s what a cable tester is for, to test if the cable is crimped!” Well… kind of. The tester is designed to make sure you don’t have any opens, splits, or shorts, within the connector or throughout the cable run, not necessarily un-crimped connectors.

Your cable tester uses a standard RJ45 modular plug that is just as prone to damage as a switch or patch panel if you plug in an improperly crimped connector, which will not be covered by the manufacturer’s warranty since it’s a wear and tear part.

It is essential to visually inspect your connectors after every crimp. If a pin is not recessed into the connector, it is likely to bend or even break one of the brittle copper pins in a modular plug.

Time is valuable and we all encourage our techs to work fast and efficiently, but we don’t always get efficiency with speed, which is why test equipment is prone to damage.

Sometimes we just want to know if our cable is good as fast as possible without having to worry about damaging our tools, which is why Platinum Tools offers the Ethernet cable “Port Saver” (part number 21025C). It’s designed to be left plugged into your tester so you can plug your newly terminated cable into the Port Saver to perform a test. If a bad crimp damages the Port Saver, no big deal, just toss it and grab another one!

Even if you use quality connectors and visually inspect every terminated connector, the Port Savers will extend the life of your tester’s jack as it can only tolerate so many plug in cycles on its own.

The Port Savers will eliminate down time and costly factory repairs due to damaged jacks. You can use these with almost any cable tester and is critical accessory for trouble free cable testing.